Color has been analyzed technically since at least as early as the discovery by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666 that sunlight contains all colors of the spectrum. Through this technical analysis, it has become clear that color is fundamentally different than tangible characteristics such as shape, size, weight, and the like in that color is purely visual. Color can be defined as the visual effect produced by the spectral composition of the light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by objects. With regard to sunlit objects seen by a human eye, the visual effect of color is the result of light passing from the sun as the source to the object and then to the detector, the eye and brain combination. The surface of the object absorbs all colors except that which is reflected to the detector.
As one skilled in the art will be well aware, traditional color theory is founded on the premise that red, yellow, and blue comprise the three primary colors. These can not be formed by mixing any combination of other colors, and all other colors are formed from mixing the three primary colors. Secondary colors green, orange, and purple are formed by combining two of the three primary colors while tertiary colors can be formed by mixing two secondary colors.
Interestingly, computer monitors typically use a red, green, blue (RGB) color model wherein those colors act as the foundation for color display. All other colors on a computer monitor yield from a combination of these basic colors. Conversely, computer printers typically depend on a different set of basic colors in that they are based on a cyan (a hue between blue and green), magenta (reddish purple), yellow, black (CMYK) color model. As a result, monitors and printers commonly reproduce colors differently.
This becomes particularly salient when one bears in mind that human beings are visually oriented mammals. Unlike many mammals whose primary senses are those of smell or hearing, our visual sense is primary. Furthermore, our vision is color sensitive and binocular (depth sensitive). There is no mistaking the importance of visual cues, especially those involving color, in our day-to-day existence. Many psychological studies have even demonstrated that certain environmental colors provoke hostility and anxiety, while other colors are conducive to rest or contemplation and still others will encourage responses such as eating more and the like.
With this, it is not surprising that so much time and money is spent to creatively employ color in almost every aspect of personal, commercial and industrial life, from products to environments. The ubiquitous new emphasis on color in interior design and interior decorating for residential, commercial and recently, even industrial spaces are primary examples. Interior decorators, even those with exceptional taste, commonly are challenged to provide a room interior that is both pleasant to behold and occupy while simultaneously remaining functional. The various components of wall and ceiling color, wall covering (i.e., wallpaper) color and pattern, window treatments (i.e., draperies and shades) type, color and pattern, floor covering type, color and pattern, and furniture style, color and pattern, and even accessories such as lamps, pictures, objet d'art, and the like, must all be properly coordinated to achieve a result that is both aesthetically pleasing and economically attractive. Similar requirements for coordination also apply to exterior components.
One might think that the simplest way to obtain a coordinated room would be to copy an acceptable design from a magazine or other published source. However, it is unlikely that a magazine design will optimize the individual desires of a consumer wishing to decorate a room. Furthermore, the consumer's room is unlikely to match physically the layout of the magazine room, and the depicted room certainly will not provide for any special furniture or accessories that a user wants to include or already owns. Still further, a magazine would not be likely to provide coordinated designs for the other rooms of the consumer's home. Therefore, a common method is to employ an interior designer and look at numerous paint and pattern samples in an attempt to select the ideal colors and patterns to coordinate a room's furnishings, relationship within itself, as well as the room's physical dimensions and relationship with other rooms of the home.
A good interior designer is usually able to narrow down the range of samples that must be viewed, but such a designer is likely to be expensive. Regardless of the price, the consumer may nonetheless end up with an environment that is more suited to the designer's taste than his or her own. If the consumer attempts to save money by making his or her own selections, the process is apt to be arduous, time consuming and frustrating. Either the interior designer or the consumer must ultimately look at myriad patterns in small-format, incomplete sample books and then attempt to integrate them with appropriate paint colors and upholstery patterns and colors, etc.
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to project precisely from a tiny sample or color swatch what that color or sample will look like on a full size wall—a problem that creates frequent and unpleasant surprises that are difficult and expensive to rectify. While most people have sensitive color vision and can recognize slight color variations when the colors are placed side by side, the vast majority of people have extremely poor color memories. Thus, to attractively integrate and coordinate colors, those colors must be physically present. Finally, aside from the integration and coordination problem, few people have the ability even to select colors that please them when applied in their environments let alone the knowledge to use color dynamically to achieve its full potential.
As a result, it often becomes painfully apparent that colors and objects thought to compliment each other or work well together in a designer's mind clash or otherwise fail to attractively integrate or have the appearance desired or predicted by the designer when applied in an actual environment. The psychological impact of the colors chosen can be equally unpredictable, can fall far afield of what had been hoped for, and frequently can be ghastly. Relative to the exteriors of building structures, most observers will be able to recall numerous instances of home exteriors that appear to be a color experiment gone wrong. Colors one can presume the designer thought would compliment each other or work well together become glaring evidence of the difficulty of predicting the actual appearance of colors on a wall or a building structure.
As a result, some homes stand as ever-present reminders of the difficulties associated with interior and exterior design. In many other cases, designers intentionally use bland colors (i.e., white) to eliminate the possibility of colors that clash and the difficulty of choosing the right colors. Unfortunately, although the color white certainly can be useful and attractive in many instances, employing the color white as a default color leads to its overuse and an overall blandness of the many home and building exteriors and interiors that use it as a safety net. Indeed, the vast majority of home and building owners and users resign themselves, due to the time, aggravation and expense of another potentially fruitless experiment, to live with a less than optimal environment.
The astute observer may be aware that the aforementioned difficulties in predicting color coordination and appearance may be greatly exacerbated by the color quality of a color's illumination. Most people have had the experience of purchasing an article at a store and then discovering that it appears to be a very different color when taken home. Colors often appear quite different under the cool white fluorescent lighting of most stores from their appearance under incandescent lighting or natural lighting found in most homes.
Systems have been disclosed by the prior art that provide a computer “rendering” in which an image of a room can be altered or rendered by the computer so that the walls, floors, and window coverings take on the appearance of desired colors or patterns. Thus, the computer can make a room image give the effect of the materials chosen by the designer or the consumer. This has been found to be a useful way to visualize a combination of colored or patterned materials. Disadvantageously, in these prior art systems, there is generally no guarantee that the spectral results will be accurate.
In particular, one knowledgeable in the art will be aware of the system patented by Engeldrum, et al. under U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,117 entitled Interactive Method and System for Color Characterization and Calibration of a Display Device. That invention has achieved commercial success relative to displaying apparel and other objects under the federally registered trademark TRUE INTERNET COLOR. In that disclosure, the inventors noted, quite correctly, that the physical and electrical characteristics of color display monitors are substantially variable even among monitors of the same type. As a result, color rendition varies significantly from device to device. Ambient lighting further affects the perceived color produced by a monitor. The inventors noted that it is desirable that images appear with the same perceived color for various users of various monitors.
Accordingly, Engeldrum et al. developed and patented a system and method for determining color rendition in an imaging device including a contrast reference providing a black reference area and a white reference area, a gamma reference that provides a halftone reference area and a continuous tone reference area, a black point reference that provides another black reference area and a color intensity reference area, a white point color temperature reference providing another white reference area, and a matching card having known visual characteristics for comparing with one of the references. The references can be images produced by the imaging device. With this, ideally, true colors can be displayed.
As such, it will be clear that, in many prior art systems, outputted color images and inputted original images have not appeared substantially identical with regard to color. Because the color characteristics of the input and output devices are not identical, original colors are not exactly reproduced even on the same type of paper. For example, when an original color image is digitized by a scanner, certain light spectra are distorted by the conversion characteristic of the scanner. Similarly, when the digitized image is outputted on a sheet of paper, certain color output is distorted during printing. As a result, the printed color image does not appear true to the original color image.
According to “Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice” by Foley et al. (1995), to a human observer, a color is perceived based on three qualities: hue, saturation and lightness/brightness. Hue distinguishes among colors such as red, green, purple and yellow. Saturation refers to an amount of whiteness in a particular color. For example, pink is unsaturated with respect to red. Lightness is perceived as intensity of a reflecting object while brightness is the perceived intensity of a self-luminous object such as a color display monitor. In contrast to the above-described qualities based upon human perception, another set of terms in colorimetry includes dominant wavelength, excitation purity and luminance that roughly correspond to hue, saturation and lightness/brightness. Among the human perceptible colors specified by the above set of values, most colors may be generated by adding the primary colors (i.e. red, yellow, and blue). However, to match all values of dominant wavelength in the visible spectrum, certain colors cannot be produced by adding positive values of the primary colors.
Although prior art methods and systems have improved the color management involving a display monitor, color matching, such as between a paper medium and a CRT display, typically did not take ambient light condition into consideration. Thus, when the color is displayed on the CRT based upon a luminance value, the human observer does not identically perceive the color patch under the ambient light and the displayed color on the CRT. For color matching and coordination on a monitor to be exact, it must be done either in a control booth or in a room where the source and type of lighting is strictly controlled. As the present inventors have appreciated, this is important to note since, no matter how well coordinated and calibrated a given system is, one can not, for example, view a monitor under fluorescent light expecting the displayed colors to have the same appearance that they would have under natural or incandescent light.
On another note, one will appreciate that computer aided design (“CAD”) programs also are known in the art. These programs allow for the design of proposed projects and structures, as well as the creation of three-dimensional models of those structures. However, traditional CAD programs have not allowed a user to utilize accurate color digitized photographic images of the user's actual home, yard, interior room, office or industrial space as a fixed composition background against which it is possible to manipulate digitized photographic images of building, home improvement and landscaping products from real manufacturers to create an accurate, realistic photographic rendering of the products in actual individualized use.
Various graphics and drawing programs are also known in the art. Programs such as Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop and similar programs allow users to “cut and paste” images onto a composite background image and to fill a particular area with a pattern. Some of these graphics and drawing programs also allow the pasted images to remain as objects over the composite background image. Programs have been proposed which allow a user to preview a few selected images of certain home improvement products against a predefined digitized background image of an interior room or other interior or exterior portion of a house, office, industrial space, other building, or the like.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,970,666, to Welsh, et al., teaches a system for producing video images that depict the appearance of a simulated structure in a video-derived image of the actual environment. The system disclosed in the '666 patent does not, however, provide for access to information about the image elements from a database by means of linking the information with the images of the products as they are manipulated or moved over the background image of the actual environment. Further, the '666 patent does not provide for access to information related to the image elements placed over or merged with a background by means of an interface associated with a computer generated screen display. Yet further, the system in the '666 patent lacks the ability to manipulate image objects (e.g., object resizing, distorting, edge smoothing, etc.) of actual products (in the form of digital images) over the background image.
Advantageously, U.S. Pat. No. 5,986,670 relates to digital image processing, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for producing a computer generated display that permits visualization of changes to the exterior or interior of any building structures. There, the invention includes a computer system for producing computer generated displays, including Windows-format displays, that permit visualization of changes to a building or structure, particularly to the exterior and interior of a residential home, in an actual environment. The system provides a background display of digital images, originating from either an image capture device or from other sources, to which changes are to be made for visualization purposes.
Under the '670 patent, the image capture device may be any digital camera, video camera, scanner, or the like. Consequently, the image capture device would not be coordinated with the remainder of the system and could be selected from any manufacturer and model. The system further provides a product catalog in the form of a database of objects, together with features in the computer system operable to record and store digital images of the objects as well as detailed information related to the objects within the database. Again, these elements are not coordinated with one another. The computer system provides a means to access the information related to the objects through a display interface, and in the preferred embodiment in the form of a Windows-pull down interface or in the form of a moveable mouse-click function. The system further provides means for copying and moving an object selected from the catalog and such means is operable to removably place the object over the background to permit what is termed as realistic visualization of the object on the background. The realistic visualization is facilitated by means of a number of tools associated with the system that permit resizing of objects, fitting objects into user designated areas, perspective orientation, and other tools.
It is said that, by employing the invention of the '670 patent, a user can visualize how various actual products would look when applied to a fixed digital photographic image of the interior or exterior of a real home or other building. A user can access numerous images of interior and exterior home products from actual manufacturers, as well as landscaping and horticultural products, in an interactive CD-ROM database. Furthermore, a user can select a specific area of the fixed background image of an interior or exterior of a home or other building and to visualize changes to only that specific area by dragging or otherwise placing image objects of products in the CD-ROM database over that specific area chosen.
The system further allows a user to arrange, rotate, position, resize, orient and otherwise manipulate the product image objects that are placed on the fixed background image to create what is termed a realistic composite image. Also, a user can manually resize a selected image object so that it will fit exactly into a selected rectangular area, or alternatively, so that it will fit proportionally into a selected rectangular area and such a feature permits the system user to resize the rectangular image or an irregular shaped image. Even further still, the '670 patent indicates that a user can make the composite image more realistic by adding shadowing, making the image look more or less sunny, “night lighting” and changing the scenery behind the main object in the composite image. Notably, however, it appears that the '670 patent fails to address fully the realities of different types of lighting. The '670 system also is deficient in that it fails to allow automatic scaling such that it will yield out-of-scale placement of objects in a given environment. This is certainly disadvantageous when one is seeking a realistic prediction of the future appearance of a room, structure, space, or the like. For example, the '670 system will generate products that do not match the renderings produced. With this, a couch that can be manipulated to be part of a given image will in all likelihood not be in a realistic scale such that it may not in reality fit in a given room or space.
In a similar vein, U.S. Pat. No. 5,751,829 provides a method and device designed to enable a user to make a choice from patterns and decorative materials using what is said to be accurate, high-resolution spectral information to ensure that chosen colors match. Also, the '829 device enables an automatic display of commercially-available paints that match the spectral characteristics of the chosen pattern. The invention also renders chosen patterns and paint colors to be accurately rendered onto actual room images. Wallpaper patterns, drapery material, floor covering, or paint can then be selected on the basis of matching color. With this, various patterns and paints can be compared side by side on a high-resolution computer monitor calibrated to produce an accurate color image. Finally, the chosen paints and other decorating materials can be rendered onto a room image so that the consumer can view an accurate simulation of the chosen materials.
The '829 patent makes note that modern computer systems are capable of displaying images in high resolution and in full color on an appropriate monitor. However, the patent further notes that most of such computer imaging has not been overly concerned with color fidelity such that the displayed image can be useless for its intended purpose. The fact of the matter is that errors in the displayed image color have several potential causes. Either the display device or the image procuring device may be incorrectly calibrated to portray color accurately. Additionally, color imperfections can be caused by the inherent limitations of either the image procuring device or the display device. Finally, types and sources of light in the original environment and the new image have been totally ignored.
Prior to the present invention, there has been no totally integrated, specially calibrated system for capturing, transferring, and displaying color accurately from original sources to end use involving memory and special applications. As the knowledgeable observer will be aware, one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of art took place during the Renaissance, and that breakthrough caused a sensation. It was the discovery that light, particularly its source and intensity, changed everything in a painting. This is evidenced most clearly in the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci. With this in mind, one will appreciate that no displayed image, whether it be painted or displayed on a monitor, can be considered truly accurate without the proper use and appreciation for light.
As was alluded to above, it should be possible to reproduce any color by measuring the intensity of light representative of the color at three discrete wavelengths. However, the reproduction of a color rarely exactly follows theory. First, measurement devices typically are unable to measure light exactly at a number of precise wavelengths. These errors in light measurement inevitably lead to errors in color reproduction. Second, the light sources used for color reproduction (in these cases, phosphors) rarely precisely match the measured wavelengths. This introduces additional color errors into the reproduction process. Third, surface characteristics such as shine or texture often influence the apparent color of an object. These factors do not affect spectrophotometric measurements in the same way that they affect human color perception. Consequently, measured color and reproduced color may differ from perceived color.
Although the abovedescribed developments have undeniably cooperated usefully to establish the present state of the art, there remain a number of deficiencies in the art that leave a cognizable need for further development. As the foregoing discussion makes clear, light is a complex phenomenon, and the computer display systems of the prior art have struggled to display color in an accurate and consistent manner. Consequently, although many prior art disclosures allow a user to perceive on a display screen the general appearance of proposed modifications to an interior or exterior of a building structure, these displays are deficient. The displays can provide a prediction of the shape and size of proposed building modifications. The displays can even provide a prediction of the approximate color of proposed changes.
Among the aspects that prior art has failed to account for properly is the complexity of light. Prior art systems may well display the general appearance of a room or building with proposed modifications to its interior or exterior. They may even be able to attempt to depict the room or building under varied lighting conditions, such as dark, dim, or well lit. However, these prior art systems have heretofore not been able to demonstrate the effects of light in its true complexity. Prior art systems have merely displayed a room or building in lit or non-lit situations. For this and further reasons, accurate appearance and color rendition have been compromised. In this way, many display systems of the prior art can be likened to much of the painted art prior to the discovery and proper depiction of the effects of light sources and types that began to take place during the Renaissance.
The astute observer will appreciate that, in real life situations, the appearance of a room, both in color and overall appearance is significantly affected, not only by whether additional light is provided, but also by the type of light and the source of the light. As was suggested above, incandescent light will produce a markedly different color appearance than will fluorescent light, just as actual sunlight will produce still another color appearance. Even further, the direction from which light is projected onto a surface, room, or building will significantly affect the rendering of the surface, room, building, or object both in color and overall appearance. With this in mind, the present inventors have uniquely appreciated as it relates to computer or television display systems that, by way of example, incandescent light coming from an overhead light fixture will bathe a room in a far different lighted appearance than will actual sunlight passing into the room through a window.